Saturday, September 1, 2012

Hate Crimes

Apparently there's a debate over whether the Amish beard cutting attacks should be prosecuted as hate crimes. Some argue no, that this attack occurred within the same religious sect, so it's not a hate crime.

Isn't this silly? Weird as it was, obviously the attack was a hateful thing to do.

But better yet, how about we drop the whole hate crime designation? The very concept of a separate "hate crime" category is dumb.

Any assault against another human being is hateful. Period.

It makes no difference that they are of the same color, the same sex, the same religion, etc. Hate is hate and it happens everywhere.

If someone makes a willful, premeditated killing to avenge an insult, a cheating spouse, or any such thing, that's hateful and should be prosecuted as 1st degree murder.

If someone makes a willful, premeditated killing because he/she hates the victim's color, race, religion, etc, that's also hateful and should be prosecuted as 1st degree murder.

The problem with inventing a "hate crime" designation is that doing so pretends that the government (or the law) can see into people's minds and make a judgement about what motivating hate factor is worse or better than someone else's hate. There is no way to enforce that fairly, and the law needs to be impartial.